Kim, Joong sik : What is Painted and What is Seen, the Gap between Real and Virtual Images

What is Painted and What is Seen, the Gap between Real and Virtual Images

                             Written by Kim Sang-cheol (Chief Editor/ The Monthly Art Magazine)

Culture is developed or changed by intensification and multiplication of the existing contents rather than discovery and creation of something new. Accumulation of civilization is equal to records of such changes, which act as an engine of power ensuring another changes. How the clues to the new changes would be discovered and intensified within the accumulated civilization must depend on historic and individuals' conditions. After all, culture is developed by rediscovery and reinterpretation of the existing contents accumulated, and what facilitates and drives the cultural development may well be new values derived from the historical conditions. Such rediscovery and reinterpretation may often seem to be coincidental, but they are not facilitated by individuals' needs but inevitable due to the historical needs.

Artist Kim Joong-sik's works are full of the familiar images. Since they approach us not as his intentions or potential meanings but as some conventional images, they have already been familiar and friendly to us, and therefore, they are heralded as some pop elements. Of course, such images tend to be banal - we should be cautious about them - but the icons shown up on his canvas annihilate such banality only to stimulate our visual sense. It is not a secret sense captured through some implicit and cautious process but an almost provocative one. Apart from the images borrowed from the familiar classical paintings, the popular figures depicted realistically and delicately serve to stimulate our sense more specifically. The figures which are revealed with confidence in forms and expressions as well as with skill may be the texts themselves 'capable of being read.' The artist evokes another kind of tension by revealing our common sense and universality through usual and seemingly banal popular images.

The sense of tension felt on artist's canvas is not only sophisticated enough to be realistic but also too general, and therefore, we cannot but be embarrassed as if we were betrayed by our sense. In addition, the formative mechanism which continues to operate repeatedly, stimulating our visual sense further, serves to intensify the sense of tension. The innumerable points tiny but orderly cover the entire canvas, which may characterize artist's works with some intense visual impression before defining their formative purpose. Those points react to the existing images to produce another images or herald quite different visual impacts through their combinations. Then, the ordinary and popular images shown up in artist's works will be interpreted and adapted in another ways to be read. The new contents read as such would be the ultimate goals pursued by the artist as well as the specific contents realizing artist's will to form.

The dual canvas structure conveys diverse messages through collision and harmony among various elements. The artist stimulates our visual sense and emotion through the dual canvas between what is painted and what is seen. The conventional images expressed with specific and realistic description create quite different visual effects by means of another images added up. The effects are complex because another images are overlapped and merged with clear and specific conventional images and innumerable points. The points in a mechanic and neat order do not play a role of disturbing and confusing the background images but internalize numerous formative factors. The seemingly regular mechanic order contains the tonal changes accumulated through numerous manual expressions. The forms constructed as such do not rely on the visual sense but evoke a visual emotion to be read through our imagination and interpretation. So, they are not physical but emotional. The artist transforms the absolutely objective things into the objects of subjective interpretation by setting an exquisite formative mechanism in the delicate gap between what is painted and what is felt. The parts described and expressed are clearly real images, but what is more important is the structure of the virtual images formed by the real images overlapped. Artist's virtual images are neither specific nor descriptive, but some unstereotyped ones acting at our imagination and emotions.

The conventional familiar images which the artist borrows have some objective forms definitely. However, the formative expression through their overlapping transforms their objective nature into some subjective one. Collision and merge among quite different heterogeneous elements in terms of time and space do not end up with a layout of visible ones but form a text to be read differently. Then, the conventional objective images will lose their own banality and universality, and what exist anew will be an subjective interpretation guided by our emotion and imagination. The artist unfolds diverse contents with such contrast and collision as well as merge and harmony. The contents are really diverse and rich, ranging from the classical and contemporary ones through Western and traditional ones to material and spiritual ones. The visual stimulation through such contrast and collision is sometimes unexpected and at other times, even cheerful. And the result is not merely the visual stimulation but something interpretable and adaptable through emotion, creating the very rich third images.

Although the artist starts by borrowing the extremely ordinary and popular images, the results will be subjective. The artist reveals the value of the invisible by describing the visible, while demonstrating some contemporary and original individuality by using the classical and traditional methods. Such formative approach must be driven by a witty inspiration. However, in order to substantiate and visualize the inspiration and thereby, herald what he intends, he must need another functional mechanism. The artist solves such problem by reinforcing the conditions for objectivity through skilled description and expression of the objects. In addition, he constructs some overlapped images through repeated work only to deepen them. Of course, we can find the similar effects in other artists' works, but apart from the external similarity, Kim Joong-sik's techniques and effects are uncomparable in terms of freshness and potential. His works are the products of interpretation and adaptation. Although they start from some objective and ordinary things, they show some subjective and unique individuality. Although they start from some classical ones, they are contemporary enough to reflect the time and space in which the artist belongs. If he could construct the conventional images to be interpreted and transformed in a more subjective way to converge onto some specific formative frameworks, we would be able to find another noteworthy and sound artist.

Kim Joong sik

1962 Born in Gongju, Choongchungbuk-do, KOERA

1985 Completed from Deparment of Fine Arts, Chugye University for the Arts, Seoul

1986 Graduated from Deparment of Fine Arts, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris,

Paris, FRANCE

1986-1988 Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris, FRANCE

Solo Exhibition

2010 Moon Gallery, Hongkong

Gallery Art Composition, Tokyo, JAPAN

2009 Philip Kang Gallery, Seoul

Group Exihbition

2010 KIAF(Korea International Art Fair), COEX, Seoul, KOREA

AHAF(Asia Top Gallery Hotel Art Fair) 2010, The Shilla Hotel, Seoul, KOREA

2009

PDAF(Peace Dream Art Festival)09 Cuando se trata lo minimo : "Es-Corazón", Sevilla, SPAIN

"-Australia Relation Exhibition 2009", Global Gallery, Sydney, AUSTRALIA